battlefield of the mind barnes and noble

'I think there are a bunch of different niches around that can still be sustained, but I don't think there's a need for the mass-book seller to be as prevalent or as apparent as they were five or 10 years ago,' Wahlstrom says.“Gwenda Bond puts a spell on you! Delightfully sexy and bewitchingly hilarious, Mr. With one of the major players gone, there might be some room, once again, for the little guys. Those who bemoaned the rise of bookselling giants might see irony in Border's demise. In February of this year, it filed for bankruptcy protection. The last time it turned a profit was 2006. With so many people going online to buy books, Borders lost out. 'I'll go to Borders to find a book, and then I'll to go to Amazon to buy it, generally,' customer Jennifer Geier says. Indeed, outside a Borders bookstore in Arlington, Va., shoppers say they rarely buy books the old-fashioned way. 'In our view, that was more like handing the keys over to a direct competitor,' Wahlstrom says. Instead, it expanded its physical plant, refurbished its stores and outsourced its online sales operation to Amazon. Eventually, it also developed its own e-reader, the Nook.īorders did not. He says Barnes & Noble also invested in beefing up its online sales. And at that same time, Barnes & Noble was pulling back,' says Peter Wahlstrom, who tracks Barnes & Noble for the investment research firm Morningstar.

went heavy into CD music sales and DVD, just as the industry was going digital. 'It made a pretty big bet in merchandising. Borders built a reputation on offering a huge variety of books - tens of thousands of titles in a single store - at a time when most bookstores could afford to stock a fraction of that.īorders also had an early technical advantage: a superior inventory system that could optimize, and even predict, what consumers across the nation would buy.īut in the mid-1990s, Borders lost its edge. The vast tracts of retail space that Borders will soon vacate speak to a gargantuan business that essentially killed itself. But Borders made some critical missteps over the years that cost it the business. Along with competitor Barnes & Noble, Borders pioneered the book megastore business. The retailer's first bookstore opened in Ann Arbor, Mich., 40 years ago. The chain's 400 remaining stores will close their doors by the end of September. The company will be liquidated - meaning sold off in pieces - and almost 11,000 employees will lose their jobs.

It appears to be all over for the Borders bookselling chain. Borders Group Inc., the nation's second-largest bookstore chain, announced that it will liquidate the company.

Battlefield of the mind barnes and noble